


Lover of the Light

by pieandangels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 02:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandangels/pseuds/pieandangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title, lyrics, and inspiration taken from "Lover of the Light" by Mumford and Sons</p><p>reviews/critiques would be super awesome???</p>
    </blockquote>





	Lover of the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Title, lyrics, and inspiration taken from "Lover of the Light" by Mumford and Sons
> 
> reviews/critiques would be super awesome???

_And in the middle of the night_  
 _I may watch you go_  
 _There'll be no value in the strength_  
 _of walls that I have grown._  
 _There'll be no comfort in the shade_  
 _of the shadows thrown._  
 _But I'd be yours, if you'd be mine_.

Dean doesn't cry. He's let a tear or two slip when times get really tough - when he loses Sammy - but he's never been a crier. Not even at his mother's funeral, because he had to be strong for Sammy and for his father. So when he wakes up with tears in his eyes, he's confused, concerned, and pissed.

But that's the problem with losing someone you love. It tears down every careful mask you've been building up. It twists and rots inside you until it's all you can do not to scream and claw your own burning insides out. And that's what Dean feels now, though he doesn't understand it. He feels sick, and he knows Sam's noticed, but he can't bring himself to talk about it. Not when there are so many more important things happening. Not while Sam is undergoing the trials. He hardly has time to think about the ache in his bones because that's not what matters now. What matters is Sam. Kevin. Crowley. Closing the Gates of Hell. Killing Naomi. Finding Cas. He'll worry about himself later.

And yet, when he lays in bed, the room dark, Sam somewhere across the bunker, he lets himself worry about the ache for a moment. He knows the source, but he can't put it into words. It was seeing Cas break Naomi's hold in the crypt. Something in that moment put this pulling, twisting, gnawing pain inside of him. Something he's never felt before.

_Stretch out my life,_  
 _and pick the seams out._  
 _Take what you like,_  
 _but close my ears and eyes._  
 _Watch me stumble over and over._  
 _I had done wrong,_  
 _you build your tower,_  
 _but call me home_  
 _and I will build a throne_  
 _and wash my eyes out never again._

Castiel thinks about Dean when he's waiting at the bus stop. He thinks about all the times he's let Dean down. He chose Heaven, he chose Crowley, he chose Purgatory, he chose Naomi. He used to have a purpose, a defined duty, but now things are fuzzy and indirect. Castiel feels human. In a way, it makes his skin crawl to think about how lost he is. But he isn't lost, not really. He has a home. Maybe not in the most conventional definition, but a home nonetheless. He has Sam and Dean. He still has a family.

He still has a family. That's the part Cas really doesn't understand. After everything, the Winchesters forgave him. The look on Dean's face after Cas broke Naomi's control is burned into his eyelids, and he sees it every time he closes his eyes. The fear. The betrayal. And much as he tries to ignore it, he can hear Dean praying to him every night, begging him to come home.

_But love the one you hold,_  
 _and I'll be your goal,_  
 _to have and to hold;_  
 _a lover of the light._

Dean forgets sometimes that Castiel is not a combination of cells within a human skin. He's a wave of light, a celestial being whose corporeal form Dean could never comprehend. And Dean is amazed by that thought. But he pretends sometimes that Cas is simply another human. Someone who grew up with parents and a nerdy little brother (Dean refuses to give this brother a name, although he sees Samandriel's face). Someone who went to high school, maybe even finished up college like Sam never got to. Someone with a degree and a secret dream of being a fireman. Dean wonders how different their lives would be, if Castiel was a hunter, not an angel.

And he decides it wouldn't change a damn thing. It doesn't matter to him what Castiel is: a pillar of light, a human, a goddamn turtle. None of it matters. All that matters is that somehow, sometime soon, Cas returns to him.

_With skin too tight_  
 _and eyes like marbles,_  
 _you spin me high,_  
 _so watch me as I glide_  
 _before I tumble homeward, homeward._

Castiel wants nothing more than to return to Heaven. Not this new, demented place run by Naomi the Dictator, but the paradise he lived in since the beginning of time. He wants to leave the suffocating skin of Jimmy Novak, stretch his wings, and soar up to that eternal Tuesday afternoon of the autistic man who drowned in a bathtub in 1953. That's where he used to feel safest.  
Things are different now. The calmness of the man's garden isn't his hideaway anymore. He'd like to go back for a visit though, to smile at the man and fly kites with him, drink tea, talk about life's simple pleasures.

And then that would be it. One last visit home, and then he'll say goodbye. Cut himself off from Heaven entirely, because as long as he's connected, he can't go back to Sam and Dean. So he'll fall for them, and he won't regret a thing, because those boys are his safe haven now. But first, he has to hide the Angel Tablet, and he can't ask them to help him with that. He can't risk them like that, especially not Dean. Dean with his freckles and his jade eyes. Dean, who turned Castiel's world upside down. Dean, who never gave up on him.

_I know I tried,_  
 _I was not stable,_  
 _and flawed by pride,_  
 _I miss my sanguine eyes._  
 _So hold my hands up -_  
 _breathe in, breathe out._

Dean feels hollow. He thinks about everyone he's let down, everyone he's failed because of his own inadequacies. His mother, his father, Jo, Ellen, Bobby, Ash, countless names and faces he can't remember anymore, and he's ashamed of himself for forgetting.

Sam. How many times has he let Sam down?

But what hurts the most is thinking that he did something to make Cas leave. He must've given Cas a reason to disappear, a reason not to trust him. There's something he wanted to say in the crypt, something that almost slipped out, and he wonders if that would've convinced Cas not to run anymore. He couldn't say it then, because he was scared. His own selfish fear of rejection kept the word from tumbling out of his bloody lips. He takes a steadying breath and tries to clear his head of everything except the angel. He's going to pray, and this time, he's going to make sure Castiel hears him.

_So love the one you hold,_  
 _and I'll be your goal,_  
 _to have and to hold;_  
 _a lover of the light._

And Castiel does hear him. He hears the word Dean was too afraid to say in the crypt, and it makes him nauseous, because he knew it all along, but he still had to leave. He wishes he could pray right back, telling Dean every secret he's kept since time began, but he knows radio silence is safest. Anything to protect Dean (and Sam too, Cas thinks). He stares out the window of the bus while Dean's prayer rings out like church bells inside his head, the same six words screamed over and over.

Come home, Cas. I love you.


End file.
